Saturday, 5 April 2014

Russia's annexation of Crimea should be condemned as aggression, violation of international law and an assertion of the principle of might is right. However, it is also the case that Russia has been under severe pressure from Western expansionism for over two decades, appears now to have regained self-confidence, and is asserting itself more strongly in its self-proclaimed 'backyard'.

Below is a piece from the usually reliable Seumas Milne of The Guardian. The article's message is one of western culpability in the coup against the incumbent Ukrainian president and the empowering of fascistic elements under the smoke-screen of promoting democracy.

The aggression in Crimea is that but it is also much more. We should bear in mind that, whatever the causes, Russia should not have violated international law and annexed Crimea. There are international forums where these issues can be discussed and resolved - they require patience, skill and diplomacy. But these are in short supply in world politics.

The article by Seumas Milne is interesting and important nevertheless: it reminds us of a fundamental fact: that the US and west are almost ceaseless in their expansionist instincts and are more than willing to persist in provocative policies that inflame rather than calm matters that they believe will expand their power and influence.

The clash in Crimea is the fruit of western expansion

The external struggle to dominate Ukraine has put fascists in power and brought the country to the brink of conflict

Troops under Russian command fire weapons into the air in Lubimovka, Ukraine. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Diplomatic pronouncements are renowned for hypocrisy and double
standards. But western denunciations of Russian intervention in Crimea
have reached new depths of self parody. The so far bloodless incursion
is an "incredible act of aggression",
US secretary of state John Kerry declared. In the 21st century you just
don't invade countries on a "completely trumped-up pretext", he
insisted, as US allies agreed that it had been an unacceptable breach of
international law, for which there will be "costs".
That the
states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked aggression in
modern history on a trumped-up pretext – against Iraq, in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000,
along with the invasion of Afghanistan, bloody regime change in Libya,
and the killing of thousands in drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and
Somalia, all without UN authorisation – should make such claims is
beyond absurdity.
It's not just that western aggression and
lawless killing is on another scale entirely from anything Russia
appears to have contemplated, let alone carried out – removing any
credible basis for the US and its allies to rail against Russian
transgressions. But the western powers have also played a central role
in creating the Ukraine crisis in the first place.
The US and
European powers openly sponsored the protests to oust the corrupt but
elected Viktor Yanukovych government, which were triggered by
controversy over an all-or-nothing EU agreement which would have excluded economic association with Russia.

In her notorious "fuck the EU" phone call
leaked last month, the US official Victoria Nuland can be heard laying
down the shape of a post-Yanukovych government – much of which was then
turned into reality when he was overthrown after the escalation of
violence a couple of weeks later.
The president had by then lost
political authority, but his overnight impeachment was certainly
constitutionally dubious. In his place a government of oligarchs, neoliberal Orange Revolution retreads and neofascists
has been installed, one of whose first acts was to try and remove the
official status of Russian, spoken by a majority in parts of the south
and east, as moves were made to ban the Communist party, which won 13%
of the vote at the last election.

It has been claimed that the
role of fascists in the demonstrations has been exaggerated by Russian
propaganda to justify Vladimir Putin's manoeuvres in Crimea. The reality is alarming enough to need no exaggeration.
Activists report that the far right made up around a third of the
protesters, but they were decisive in armed confrontations with the
police.Fascist gangs now patrol the streets. But they are also in Kiev's corridors of power. The far right Svoboda party, whose leader has denounced the "criminal activities" of "organised Jewry"
and which was condemned by the European parliament for its "racist and
antisemitic views", has five ministerial posts in the new government,
including deputy prime minister and prosecutor general. The leader of
the even more extreme Right Sector, at the heart of the street violence,
is now Ukraine's deputy national security chief.
Neo-Nazis in
office is a first in post-war Europe. But this is the unelected
government now backed by the US and EU. And in a contemptuous rebuff to
the ordinary Ukrainians who protested against corruption and hoped for
real change, the new administration has appointed two billionaire
oligarchs – one who runs his business from Switzerland – to be the new
governors of the eastern cities of Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk.
Meanwhile, the IMF is preparing an eye-watering austerity plan for the
tanking Ukrainian economy which can only swell poverty and unemployment.
From
a longer-term perspective, the crisis in Ukraine is a product of the
disastrous Versailles-style break-up of the Soviet Union in the early
1990s. As in Yugoslavia, people who were content to be a national
minority in an internal administrative unit of a multinational state –
Russians in Soviet Ukraine, South Ossetians in Soviet Georgia – felt
very differently when those units became states for which they felt
little loyalty.
In the case of Crimea, which was only transferred
to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, that is clearly true for
the Russian majority. And contrary to undertakings given at the time,
the US and its allies have since relentlessly expanded Nato up to
Russia's borders, incorporating nine former Warsaw Pact states and three
former Soviet republics into what is effectively an anti-Russian
military alliance in Europe. The European association agreement which
provoked the Ukrainian crisis also included clauses to integrate Ukraine
into the EU defence structure.
That western military expansion was first brought to a halt in 2008 when the US client state of Georgia attacked Russian forces in the contested territory of South Ossetia and was driven out. The short but bloody conflict signalled the end of George Bush's unipolar world in which the US empire would enforce its will without challenge on every continent.
Given
that background, it is hardly surprising that Russia has acted to stop
the more strategically sensitive and neuralgic Ukraine falling
decisively into the western camp, especially given that Russia's only
major warm-water naval base is in Crimea.
Clearly, Putin's
justifications for intervention – "humanitarian" protection for Russians
and an appeal by the deposed president – are legally and politically
flaky, even if nothing like on the scale of "weapons of mass
destruction". Nor does Putin's conservative nationalism or oligarchic
regime have much wider international appeal.
But Russia's role as a
limited counterweight to unilateral western power certainly does. And
in a world where the US, Britain, France and their allies have turned
international lawlessness with a moral veneer into a permanent routine,
others are bound to try the same game.
Fortunately, the only shots
fired by Russian forces at this point have been into the air. But the
dangers of escalating foreign intervention are obvious. What is needed
instead is a negotiated settlement for Ukraine, including a broad-based
government in Kiev shorn of fascists; a federal constitution that
guarantees regional autonomy; economic support that doesn't pauperise
the majority; and a chance for people in Crimea to choose their own
future. Anything else risks spreading the conflict.